"The medium is the message"

On Wednesday, April 30, 2025, I had the opportunity to deliver a short talk to the youth of Argao during a seminar entitled "LSakto: Leader Sakto - A Youth Empowerment for Wise Leadership and Career Development." The event was organized by the Argao Youth Development Council, led by the town's Sangguniang Kabataan officials. The event focused on scholarships, leadership development, and voter's education. I was assigned to speak on voter's education, with an integrated focus on media literacy and disinformation.

- Atty. Ian Vincent Manticajon

Whenever I talk about media literacy, especially in relation to social media, I always frame it through the lens of Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum, “The medium is the message.” McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher and media theorist active in the 1960s and 70s, is best known for coining that phrase along with 'the global village.' Although McLuhan coined his theory decades ago and is no longer with us, I figured --having studied his work in college-- that it was worth connecting his “the medium is the message” to today’s society and our apparent failure to grasp the nature and impact of social media on our lives.

“The medium is the message” suggests that the way a message is delivered (the medium) “is just as important --if not more so-- than the content itself.” The medium shapes how messages are structured, perceived, and even the kind of impact they generate.

Social media came to us in the mid-2000s, and it came fast --quickly becoming mainstream and dominant by the 2010s. By the mid-2010s, it had fully reshaped how people consumed news, formed opinions, and interacted with the each other.